Wednesday, December 2nd &
Thursday, December 3rd
Beyond Bullet Points: Turning Raw Text Into High Impact Graphics
In an information-heavy world, text-dense emails and dry meeting minutes often get ignored. Discover how to use AI tools like Gemini and ChatGPT to instantly transform conversation notes, professional learning concepts, and PLC brainstorming sessions into striking, attention-grabbing visuals. This session demonstrates practical workflows for turning raw text into high-impact graphics that captivate teachers, streamline communication, and make professional development stick. Leave with a blueprint for using AI as your school's personal graphic designer.
Kristina Peterson is a high school English teacher, author, and national presenter. Her book, AI in the Writing Workshop: Finding the Write Balance, co-authored with Dennis Magliozzi, explores what happens to teaching and learning when generative AI enters the writing process. Rather than approaching AI as either a shortcut to embrace or a threat to eliminate, Kristina works alongside students to investigate where these tools can deepen thinking, provide meaningful scaffolds, and support learning—and where educators need to protect spaces in which students do the intellectual work themselves. She serves on her school district's AI committee, as well as the National Council of Teachers of English AI Framework project. Her work has appeared in Education Week, English Journal, and Educational Leadership, and she presents regularly on the role of AI in schools.
Struggle or Barrier? Three Ways to Use AI Without Losing the Learning
Explore three ways your students can use generative AI---as thought partner, research partner, and writing partner---without handing over the thinking we actually want them to do. In this hands-on workshop, experience classroom strategies as a learner first, then adapt one for your own students, content area, or role. Real examples from a high school writing workshop show what has worked, what has not and where the answers still are not simple. You also hear from Sloane, a high school student with dyslexia, who uses AI not to replace her thinking but to remove barriers that have historically made that thinking harder for others to see. Her experience raises the question at the center of this session: when does AI remove productive struggle and when does it remove a barrier to productive struggle? This is NOT a session about writing the perfect AI policy or collecting the newest tools. It is an invitation to decide what learning we want to protect, what barriers technology might help us remove, and how we teach students to make those calls alongside us. Bring a device and one lesson you already teach. Leave with a framework, classroom-ready strategies, and something you can use the next day. No prior AI experience needed.
